


A Feast for the Doctrine of Greatness

by savi0urdr3amer



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Superiority Complex, i just rly fucking love lust, i'm so fascinated by her character i'm sorry lmfao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 21:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4495350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savi0urdr3amer/pseuds/savi0urdr3amer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is the ultimate embodiment of everything humans should strive to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Feast for the Doctrine of Greatness

**Author's Note:**

> i actually posted something that's not smut for once, can u fucking believe it 
> 
> (someone pls talk to me about lust, i could write about her and envy for the rest of my life lmao)

She is claws and the sight of everlasting darkness; raven locks, black holes, and a smile that says _mess with me, I dare you_. Even though her voice is sweeter than sugar, richer than velvet and a smooth sea, there lies an unmistakable toxin in her words that’s corrosive enough to rot bone, to tear apart flesh from nerve, and the taut expression says what her words don’t: _I’m not sorry_.

She is midnight and thunderstorms, the sound of glass breaking. She wears temptation like a dress and walks like the world’s on her shoulders but you’d never be able to tell, because her walls are a thousand feet high and forged of steel stronger than greed. There’s a sway to her hips that’s dangerous, and looking at her is like having a knife held to your gut; her grin could cut a man in two and she wouldn’t blink. _Not worth her time_ , she says. She has better things to worry about.

Price is funny and it doesn’t matter to her. Consequences are funny too – but omnipotent, much like the desire, the very thing that drives her. It’s in the pit of her stomach, a flame being showered with alcohol; _Do whatever it takes_ , she tells them, _whatever it takes_. _People can die, blood can be spilt. It’s all in the name of the game, and sometimes pawns must be lost._ She tells the shapeshifter it’s for the greater good. The one with the endless stomach rattles in his cage, prying at its bars with meaty hands.

Chances will come, she reminds herself. All in good time.

The shapeshifter who bears jealousy for a face wears the mask of an innocent man whose blood was brutally spilt in a booth, a bullet driven into his gut, and her expression does not change when she hears that the deed has been done and sees for herself. She stares into the changeling’s eyes, still disguised as a dead man who knew too much, and offers her congratulations. She wears the tattoo between her collarbones with extra pride today. The dragon still devours its own tail endlessly, dying and dying again before it revives, but today she’s far ahead of this cycle. She is living.

 _It was easy_. The chameleon tells her, their sneer a razor blade. _You could see every emotion he was feeling as his own wife shot him… It was great_.

 _I’m sure it was_. She tosses her hair behind her shoulders. Humans are so silly, she thinks. So fragile and naïve. Their feeble attachments to those around them are nothing more than superfluous distractions. And very dangerous ones, at that…Humans are so trusting. They’ll point knives at the backs of their comrades and smile as they watch their prey bleed and ache, and the denounced will never know what hit them harder: the betrayal or the embrace of death. Sometimes she doesn’t know whether to strike while a human’s guard is down or laugh at the sheer obliviousness of it all.

They’d never even suspect a thing.

 _See? That’s what makes humans such nice targets_. _To a certain extent, they’re clever…_ Her voice is velvet, churning and rich and smooth like the surface of dark, glassy water. She could talk a man into murder without batting an eyelash. _But no matter what position you play…you always win. Why?_ She coils her fingers. _Because humans are imperfect. They’re weak and don’t know what they want._

 _But me? I know what I desire._ She greets darkness as an old friend, the sound of her heels echoing against the concrete. _And I’ll do anything to get it_.

She once ran her fingers through a prophet who preached lies like they were the truth, and even his blood felt fake against her skin. Truthfully, she was surprised his skull wasn’t as hollow as it looked. Next her nails met steel, piercing through a blood seal, and her voice ran cold that night because she began dawdling on the edge of failure. Everything she’d worked for came so damn close to upheaval, and although she was lucky, this was a chance she didn’t want to take again. She reminds herself of this. _Remember that failure is not an option._

That’s why when he pulls the Philosopher’s Stone from her body, she re-materializes like it was nothing. She is perfection. She is absolution, and what is beating in place of her heart is stronger than him, stronger than he will _ever_ be.

At least that’s what she thought.

When the flames engulfed her like water, it was almost like a prophecy, a postlude, a consequence. The reminder she’d burned into her head became one on her skin. Again, again, and again, she rose from her own ashes, quenched from the toll of spirits required to revive her, and while she was still perfection, as unfathomable as ever, her infallibility had a limit. It was so much higher than his, the man who should’ve bled to death aside his fellow soldier in arms. And yet here he stood in front of her, a burn carved into his palm, his knuckles bleeding, eyes drenched with a dark, livid passion that sent shivers down her spine. Here, he matches her.

His drive, his desire. They stand on equal ground and it brings her to her knees. Her breath is heavy and she smells of scorched skin. There is heat in the air and her bones crack with what feels like pain as she draws her elbow back and envisions her talons piercing his forehead. She cannot lose. She’s not supposed to feel like this.

There’s merciless calculation in his eyes, despite knowing what’s happened, that he’s won. She can practically feel the itch in her satiated, the tip of her talon resting mere centimeters from his skin, but something in her has run dry. She searches for her ambition and finds an empty well, a hollow room. Nothing. He was stronger.

With the last of her strength she eyes him almost enviously, perhaps even respectfully. _You and I are the same_ , she thinks. _We both know what we want. And how to get it._ She feels tepid inside.

 _You killed me_. Saying this feels wrong, so against her morals, but there is no hiding from death. The truth encases everyone. As she begins dissolving into what she felt was beneath her, she tells him that it could’ve been worse. She could’ve been uncaring. So could he. But in reality, he was the only one worthy of ever killing her; no one else had the same lust in their eyes that she knew so well. No one else carried what she was named for the way he did.

And his own reckoning will come one day, perhaps more painful than the incineration that ran her and thousands upon thousands of other preserved lives dry, and when it comes, she’ll be watching with a smile sharper than her talons, because that, too, will be perfection, and it will be the very transformation of her failure into glory, the screams of pleasure, pain, and denial that came with the very nature of a lust powerful enough to bring down mighty cities under a single blood red moon.

And then the glass prison shatters. 


End file.
